“You stopper at Papeete?” said he, as we finished our drink and came out of the café.
“Yes,” I replied; and this answer of mine seemed to give him immense satisfaction.
I saw Pokara almost daily after that, and I vow that it was chiefly his wondrous personality and its effect on my youthful mind that made me leave the Presidency orchestra and take to troubadouring with the old Tahitian chief.
“You comer with me and play violin in villages a longer way off, and we make lots of money,” said he one day, after I had been down at his primitive homestead. Then he began to tell me _Arabian Nights_ tales concerning the riches of the native villages and the wonders to be seen in the pagan citadels over the mountains. And so it happened that we went off together. It was a glorious day when I found myself tramping with my violin strung beside me, crossing the palm-clad slopes of Mount Orehena, _en route_ for the pagan villages where dwelt great high-caste chiefs and chiefesses.
It seemed like some wild dream of a mediæval age when I first stood in a pagan township playing my violin to dark-eyed, dusky houris. They stood with finger to their hushed lips as I played by their bamboo huts and Pokara sang a weird _himine_. I might say here that Pokara had made me memorize several quaint heathen tunes before we started off on that expedition, as well as telling me monstrous tales about princes and chiefs who would cast pearls at my feet as prolifically as one throws rice on a happy marriage morn. But, alas! it was not all as rosy as my Tahitian comrade had painted it. And I thanked Heaven that the expenses attached to the rôle of troubadouring were not over-abundant in those glorious climes. Beyond languishing glances from the star-eyed, golden-skinned Tahitian belles, I did not get much out of the adventure; but I must admit that the sight of Pokara, with his tasselled sash flung gracefully over his tawny shoulder and a fascinating poetic grin on his wrinkled mouth, was something worth sweating across those tropic miles for in far-off Tahiti. I know that Pokara seemed to look upon that trip as the time of his life, as he passed round amongst our dusky audiences with his coco-nut-shell collecting-box. Often the old chiefs would persuade us to stay the night in the village, so that we might serenade them at their sacred festival rites and wedding ceremonies. And for such services we would receive the highest honours and valuable curios—tappa-cloth, pearl shells, and many things that would make a heavy load. Pokara managed to get hold of two large sacks, and, filling them with our presents, had the cheek to ask me to carry one. But this I positively refused to do, whereupon Pokara hid his booty in the jungle till such time as he could come back and fetch it.